


Bound

by Viridian5



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Angst, Canon - Manga, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-31
Updated: 2005-10-31
Packaged: 2017-10-02 07:15:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viridian5/pseuds/Viridian5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Took what I hated and made it a part of me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bound

**Author's Note:**

> Story takes place between the ending of volume 5's "Be There" and the beginning of the "Burial" storyline in _Reload_. Spoilers for Hakkai's past.

I spent a lot of time staring at the ceiling at night, my mind racing, my body rebelling, and sleep eluding me. Buddhist teaching considered it best to be bound by nothing and free to live life as it was, but I remained bound to the Gonou I had been, and he'd never been able to let go of anything. Thus, I obsessed over useless things.

I had lost Kanan forever and couldn't do a thing about it, yet I dwelled on her death. Sometimes I even resented her, horrible as it made me feel to do it. Surely my very presence there, bloodied, ready to rescue her, should have shown her the depths of my love and that what had happened to her didn't have to scar our relationship. I had no illusions about what the centipede clan would do to her and how much say she'd have in anything. I loved her, and if she wanted to be rid of the child I would have understood completely and helped however I could. There were ways to get rid of one, she knew as I did, and apparently neither of us was too squeamish to kill. If she'd wanted to keep the child I would have endeavored to love it as well.

It hadn't been enough for her. She'd felt too dishonored, carrying "the beast's child," to continue living. But had she really needed to kill herself with _my knife_? In front of me?

Useless to dwell on it now. Kanan was dead, and there would be no redheaded, red-eyed bastard--half my sister, half her youkai rapist--to test the limits of my small, dark heart. The human Gonou was every bit as dead, as I'd become what I'd hated: youkai. I had a new life I had to live.

I was making as big a mess of this life as I had of the old one. Gojyo deserved better than me.

Gojyo deserved a friend who didn't stare at his half-breed red hair and red eyes and think up the most obnoxious questions, such as "Had anyone ever told your mother she carried a beast's child?" As if Gojyo would even know. As if Gojyo wouldn't have every right to punch me if I'd ever dared to ask such a horrible question. He deserved a friend who didn't tell him that his hair and eyes were the color of sin and blood, helping me to remember my gory crimes. I wince to think of what I'd said in my desire to be honest with him before I left to meet what I saw as penance and a well-deserved doom.

He deserved a friend who didn't lust after him like a beast. Since coming back to live with him as Hakkai I'd become obsessed by his body. When he walked around shirtless I couldn't help fixating on the jut of his collarbones and hipbones, wanting to gnaw on them. Wanting to grab him and--

Had this always been inside me and I was just discovering it, as it had been when I found out how easily and well I could kill, or was it an expression of my newly youkai body? Was I becoming just like the bastards who'd stolen and despoiled Kanan?

It was wrong, not the desire to have him but the way my depraved mind and body wanted to express it, in something more like violence and possession instead of sex. It was wrong, because I think he loves me and I would meet that love with something bestial.

As a teacher, I'd sometimes see a child come in with marks on his or her arms, partially hidden by sleeves, or back, revealed when a shirt pulled up a little as they moved. Almost none of them would reveal the person who so abused them, hopelessly loving their victimizer and taking the blame. I knew it well enough to see the tendency in Gojyo and know that if I moved on him as my sordid instincts desired he would not protest or think he deserved anything else. I knew it. Thus, I had to be strong for both of us.

I had to ignore his easy and casual sensuality and his utter disregard for the concept of personal space. I had to disregard his odd, hard beauty, so utterly different from what had attracted me to Kanan, and his soft heart. I had to prevent myself from succumbing to even the gentler expressions of my desire for him, like the urge to run his currently short hair through my fingers, washing my hands in red again, a different red, for fear of what it might lead to.

I had to fight the erotic fantasies of him that came to me sometimes, particularly at night when I slept in the bed that had once been his. Imagining how he would move and how he would sound and how his skin and blood would taste.... Unwilling to stain Kanan's memory and his reality I never touched myself but sometimes I came anyway, just from the thoughts. It left me ashamed and made me uneasy around him. I tried to be kind to him in other, completely innocent, ways to make up for it, but I felt it falling short.

To my guilt, he felt the change in me and it obviously hurt him. I'd been so open with him during my month of recovery, a time I'd known would be finite and end in my death and so didn't count, that my current distance must scream to him. Did he blame himself?

Yet I couldn't tell him my reasons. It wouldn't reflect well on either of us and might not make him feel any better.

I could hear him return home from the bars, my youkai senses able to pick it up even through the closed door. When I'd first returned he hadn't gone out at night much but as I'd withdrawn more to protect him he returned to his old ways, seeking companionship I didn't dare give him. I couldn't blame him for it, but I didn't open the door to watch him move around in a loose-limbed, drunken, satiated way or to smell the sex on him.

I hid in here to protect the both of us, and felt low doing it.

  


* * *

I knew Hakkai was awake, even with the bedroom door closed. House felt different somehow when he was. Wish he hadn't made dinner for me, since I never knew when I'd be home and he realized that. Made me feel guilty.

I put my palm against the door but didn't go bother him about it, even if he was awake. He'd been flinching away from me lately, so I didn't want to get too close. He couldn't look at me straight anymore either. Things used to be different. Things had been great before....

I missed him.

Wish he'd tell me what I was doing wrong now. At least Mom had given me that.

 

### END


End file.
